What is this stuff? (steering pump rebuild, mystery substance inside engine) (1 Viewer)

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I just pulled my power steering pump to rebuild it. I took a peek inside the engine opening and was horrified to see some kind of substance peeling up from the inner wall of the engine. When I touched the peeled up bit, it broke off and stuck against the gear that drives the PS pump.

I pulled out the chunks and then rubbed my fingers inside, until all the bits had crumbled free in my hands.

It occurs to me that this may be the sealant that I can see on the outside. Or maybe it's the worst oil deposits that I've ever seen... Any thoughts?



Poor focus, but you can see the chunk lodged against the gear, and you can see the grey sealant on the outside:



Close-up of a chunk of the material:



Opposite side of the same chunk:

 
It may in fact be sealant, but my best guess is one of the owners who owned your truck before you, didn't change the oil very often. If it were me, I'd leave those deposits alone. I had a customer once who brought his car into my shop because it had low oil pressure. It seems this customer found what he though was the cause of his low oil pressure. He found sludge, and carbon deposits under his valve covers that were plugging up the oil return holes in his cylinder heads . Well he took it upon himself to "clean" those deposit off. What happened next, alot of that carbon, and sludge he was cleaning off just ended up in his oil pan. When i removed his pan, i found the oil pickup screen was packed full of fresh pieces of carbon, and sludge, the deposits he though he was helping by removing, had in fact made his oil pressure problem worst. In this case, 99% of his oil pressure problems were owner caused. He had never once change his PCV valve, instead of changing his oil every 3000 miles he would go 7500 miles or more, plus he told me he only changed his oil filter every other oil change. He said he just didn't see the need to replace his oil and filter that often. This is the kind of owner you DON'T WANT TO BUY your Land Cruiser from.
 
To be clear, I'm not concerned about the waxy-colored sludge behind the gear, only the black stuff that was lifting up. Having slept on it, I'm pretty certain it's just excess sealant, though I still find it odd that was basically crumbling. The photo with the tweezers is after spraying it with brake cleaner, which appeared to wash off whatever sludge was on it.

I was mostly concerned that there was some sort of membrane in there that was breaking down, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
 
How did you feel about your engine before you removed the PS pump?
 

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